Voice For Liberty

Tag: Economics

  • Household income in the states

    Household income in the states

    A visualization of household income by state, adjusted for inflation.

    The Census Bureau supplies the values as current dollars and as 2018 dollars adjusted by the consumer price index. This visualization presents the values in 2018 dollars, so the effects of inflation are removed. Data is available through 2018.

    The source of this data is the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements. See Income and Poverty in the United States: 2018.

    To learn more about the data and use the visualization, click here.

    Example from the visualization. Click for larger.
  • Unemployment in the world after the pandemic

    Unemployment in the world after the pandemic

    The unemployment rate in the United States rose sharply as the response to the pandemic affected its economy. How have other countries fared?

    The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) gathers economic data from its member countries. This provides a mechanism for comparing the performance of economies as influenced by each country’s response to the pandemic. A statistic that many use as a measure, including United States President Donald J. Trump, is the unemployment rate. 1

    Unemployment rates were steady or declining until the pandemic, or the response to the pandemic, affected economies. The nearby chart, which starts with July 2018, illustrates. In includes data through June 2020 for the United States, and through May for the other included countries.

    Most countries (or groups of countries) saw a rise in the unemployment rate, followed by a decline. Notably, the unemployment rate for the U.S. rose to a higher value than the other countries included on the chart. This is after having nearly the lowest rate before the pandemic.

    Also notable is Japan. Its unemployment rate has been trending upward slowly this year, but hasn’t experienced the spike that other countries saw.

    Here is a link to the chart, or use the embedded version below.

    The Euro area is countries that have adopted the Euro as currency. These are Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

    G7, the Group of Seven, is a group of seven large economies, consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

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    Notes

    1. OECD defines the unemployment rate as follows: “The unemployed are people of working age who are without work, are available for work, and have taken specific steps to find work. The uniform application of this definition results in estimates of unemployment rates that are more internationally comparable than estimates based on national definitions of unemployment. This indicator is measured in numbers of unemployed people as a percentage of the labour force and it is seasonally adjusted. The labour force is defined as the total number of unemployed people plus those in employment. Data are based on labour force surveys (LFS). For European Union countries where monthly LFS information is not available, the monthly unemployed figures are estimated by Eurostat.” See https://data.oecd.org/unemp/unemployment-rate.htm. ↩
  • Wichita aerospace manufacturing concentration

    Wichita aerospace manufacturing concentration

    Wichita leaders want to diversify the area economy. Has there been progress?

    In the wake of layoffs at Textron Aviation and Spirit Aerosystems, Wichita’s leaders shifted their attention to the need to diversify the Wichita metropolitan area economy. This has been a recognized need for a long time. 1

    Recently the Wichita Eagle published an article addressing this matter. 2 It did not, however, cite any statistics that measure the diversity — or lack of — in the Wichita economy.

    One way to measure the concentration of an industry in a location is by the proportion of employment in that industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides the number of employees by industry for metropolitan areas. I’ve gathered the data for the Wichita MSA for two industries: Aerospace Product and Parts Manufacturing (NAICS code 3364) and all manufacturing. I compare it to total private sector employment. This data is not adjusted for seasonality, as some are available only in that manner. Data is through June 2020.

    First, note the effects on employment due to the response to the pandemic.

    Here are the employment ratios.


    As the charts illustrate, there was a large downward shift in the two industry’s share of employment around the time of the Great Recession. Since then, the ratios have been more stable, with a slow decline until a small reversal of that trend over the last two years until the effects of the pandemic. That caused the ratios of employment in manufacturing to fall.

    The charts of employment ratio changes from the same month one year ago confirms: Manufacturing and aerospace employment has grown faster than total private employment for the last two years or so, until the pandemic.


    Another way to measure the concentration of industry is through location quotients. The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides these, most notably for counties as part of the Quarterly of Census and Wages. 3 As described by BLS, “Location quotients are useful for studying the composition of jobs in an area relative to the average, or for finding areas that have high concentrations of jobs in certain occupations. As measured here, a location quotient shows the occupation’s share of an area’s employment relative to the national average.” 4

    Further: “For example, a location quotient of 2.0 indicates that an occupation accounts for twice the share of employment in the area than it does nationally, and a location quotient of 0.5 indicates the area’s share of employment in the occupation is half the national share.”

    This data is available by industry. I’ve gathered data for Aerospace Product and Parts Manufacturing (NAICS code 3364) for Sedgwick County and present it in a nearby chart. Data is through the end of 2019, and so does not reflect the pandemic.

    First, note that the location quotient is large, averaging around 32 in recent years. This means the concentration of workers in this industry in Sedgwick County is 32 times the concentration nationwide.

    Second, the location quotient fell from 2007 through 2014. Since then, it has been steady.

    Has the Wichita area diversified its economy? Based on these two measures, the answer is yes. That increase in diversity coincided with a large decline in aviation-related employment, with that decline being larger than the decline in all Wichita-area private-sector employment. That was not planned or desired. It was a result of worldwide trends, most notably the Great Recession.

    But since 2014, concentration in aviation-related employment has changed little, meaning no progress in diversification.

    —
    Notes

    1. See, for example: Roe, John. Where To From Here? Surviving The Coming Bad Times Will Require A Direction, Wichita Eagle, February 7, 1993. ↩
    2. Stringer, Megan. Aviation is key to Wichita. For workers, what does a diversified economy mean? Wichita Eagle, July 26, 2020. Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20200728163347/https://www.kansas.com/news/business/aviation/article244420152.html. ↩
    3. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Available at https://www.bls.gov/cew/datatoc.htm. ↩
    4. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Using Location Quotients to Analyze Occupational Data. Available at https://www.bls.gov/oes/highlight_location_quotients.htm. ↩
  • Federal revenue and outlays

    Federal revenue and outlays

    An interactive visualization of federal government revenue and spending from 1962 to the present.

    This data comes from the Congressional Budget Office Budget and Economic Data page. While CBO often makes projections of the future and those projections may be controversial, the data in this visualization is historical.

    CBO presents this data in current dollars and as a percent of gross domestic product, or GDP. When current dollars are adjusted to account for inflation, the result is “real dollars.” In this visualization, I have used the CPI to convert current dollars to the value of dollars in 2019.

    CBO also presents data as a percentage of gross domestic product. This is a measure of the portion of our national income that is spent as outlays or taxed as revenue.

    Click here to learn more about the data and access this visualization.

    Example from the visualization. Click for larger.
  • Effects of pandemic on employment in states

    Effects of pandemic on employment in states

    The effects of the response to the pandemic vary widely among the states, but federal government employment has been little affected.

    In the nearby examples from my interactive visualization of state employment by industry, we can see a pattern:

    • Private-sector employment is rebounding after a dip. Employment in June as compared to January ranges from negative 18.7 percent in Hawaii to negative 3.6 percent in Idaho. For the nation, June employment is 10.0 percent below January.
    • Federal government employment was affected very little by the response to the pandemic.
    • In most states, state government employment fell, and recovery — or not — varies widely by state. Employment in June as compared to January ranges from negative 19.4 percent in Wisconsin to 10.5 percent in Nevada. For the nation, the decline is 5.3 percent.
    • Local government employment fell in all states and has improved in most. Employment in June as compared to January ranges from negative 15.1 percent in Connecticut to 2.1 percent in Tennessee. For the nation, the decline is 8.1 percent.

    To learn more and explore the data, visit the interactive visualization at Visualization: Employment in the states.

    This data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the United States Department of Labor. Data is current through June. BLS plans to release July data for these series on August 21.

    Private sector employment. Click for larger.
    Federal government employment. Click for larger.
    State government employment. Click for larger.
    Local government employment. Click for larger.
  • Presidential data explorer

    Presidential data explorer

    Explore the economic record of presidents, starting with Harry S Truman.

    To examine the record of presidents regarding economics, I gathered data from several sources and present it in an interactive visualization. Data includes:

    • Jobs
    • Labor force
    • Unemployment
    • Dow Jones stock market index
    • Gross Domestic Product
    • Inflation

    For each president, data is presented by month, with the first month of each president’s term having number one. Presidents that served two full terms have data up to month 96 of their term, while others have fewer months. A nearby example shows the proportional growth in the Dow for each month of a president’s first term.

    Data is shown in several views:

    • A table.
    • A chart showing the monthly value of a statistic by month for each president.
    • A chart showing the change in the absolute value of a statistic by month for each president.
    • A chart showing the proportional change in the value of a statistic for each president.
    • Grids of the same data.

    For most views, you may select a range of months and which presidents appear.

    Most data starts with the Truman administration in April 1945, and is current through June 2020.

    Click here to learn more about the data and access the visualization.

    Example from the visualization. Click for larger.
  • Kansas jobs, June 2020

    Kansas jobs, June 2020

    The employment situation in Kansas continued to improve in June 2020 as the response to the pandemic continued to affect the economy.

    Data released today from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the United States Department of Labor, shows the effect of the pandemic and the response to it on employment in Kansas for June 2020.

    (Click charts and tables for larger versions.)

    Using seasonally adjusted data, from May 2020 to June 2020, nonfarm employment in Kansas rose by 30,200 (2.3 percent). Over the year, the number of Kansas nonfarm jobs for June 2020 was lower by 78,400 (5.5 percent) over the same month last year. This is using seasonally adjusted data. The non-adjusted figure is 77,200 fewer jobs (5.4 percent).

    Over the year (June 2019 to June 2020), the Kansas labor force is down by 3,633 (0.2 percent) using seasonally adjusted data, with a decrease of 25,316 (1.7 percent) over the last month. Non-seasonal data shows a fall of 3,176 (0.2 percent) in the labor force over the year.

    Of note: While the number of jobs and working people rose by large amounts in June, both are still much smaller than before the response to the pandemic.

    The number of unemployed persons fell from May 2020 to June 2020 by 40,492 (26.8 percent). The unemployment rate was 7.5 percent in June, up 4.4 percentage points from one year ago, and down 2.5 percentage points from last month.

    Comparing Kansas to the nation: Using seasonal data, the number of Kansas nonfarm jobs is 2.30 percent lower than 12 months ago, while nationally, the same statistic is 3.61 percent lower. Non-seasonal data shows the number of Kansas nonfarm jobs is 5.42 percent lower than 12 months ago, while nationally, the same statistic is 8.72 percent lower.

    Click charts and tables for larger versions.

    In the following chart showing job changes from the previous month, the magnitude of the changes in April through June overwhelms the other months. The rise in June employment is larger than experienced in any other month during the past year.

    In the following chart of job levels from the same month one year ago, the June figures show the loss of jobs becoming less severe.

    The June release contained figures for industry groups. The following chart shows the number of employees in June 2019 and June 2020.

    This chart uses the same data, showing the percent change from June 2019. The Leisure and hospitality category is still the lowest, proportionally. Construction showed the smallest proportional loss.

  • Effects of pandemic on Wichita metro employment

    Effects of pandemic on Wichita metro employment

    Here is the effect of the pandemic — or rather, the effect of the response to the pandemic — on Wichita metropolitan area employment. For more data on this topic, see Wichita jobs and employment, May 2020.

  • Measuring household experiences during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

    Measuring household experiences during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

    An interactive visualization of household data on the effects of the pandemic.

    To help understand the social and economic effects of the pandemic, the United States Census Bureau has created a program to gather and disseminate data. The program’s title and website is Household Pulse Survey.

    The first data was collected on April 23, 2020. Data is collected for all states and the 15 largest metropolitan areas each week.

    The survey asks many questions, and there are six that the Bureau makes available in an interactive explorer. I have gathered this data for the states and created an interactive visualization. The data is presented in a table and two charts. You may select the time frame, questions, and states that appear.

    To learn more about the data and access the visualization, click on Visualization: Measuring household experiences during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

    Example from the visualization. Click for larger.